Today was the second training for this peer counseling training I am in. The whole thing will take a year, and then I can actually be a peer counselor here. If you don't finish it, you still gain listening skills for your personal and professional life. 

They have us use real-life problems for examples, since they're more realistic. They also find it's easier to be empathetic later on if you've done some of the work on yourself--recognizing your own issues. We actually had to make a list! I could make a long list... but the reassuring thing is that many of their list examples didn't resonate with me :)

It's fascinating to hear about others' problems. We're not supposed to talk about them--but basically they show the universality of the human experience. The themes you can find are so interesting to me--conflict between expected emotion and actual emotion. Disappointment in self and those who were trusted. Not meeting expectations set for self. A screenwriter could get a lot of fuel for some scripts... :)